Interrelationships among sweetness, saltiness and total taste intensity of sucrose, NaCl and sucrose/NaCl mixtures

Abstract

A proper description of the taste interaction in mixtures requires that scale values are assessed on response scales which are linear with perceived taste intensity. In the present study, the interrelationships among the sweetness, saltiness and total taste intensity of unmixed sucrose, unmixed NaCl and mixtures of sucrose and NaCl were studied according to a conceptual scheme that formalizes the interrelationships among different psychological constructs involved in the research of mixtures of dissimilar tasting substances. The scale values of perceived sweetness, saltiness and total taste intensity were assessed using a functional measurement approach in combination with a two-stimulus procedure. The results showed that the scale values obtained were linear with perceived taste intensity. The two most important results were that (i) the perceived total taste intensity of a sucrose/NaCl mixture could be well predicted by the square root of the sum of the squared intensities of the taste intensities of the unmixed components of the mixture, and (ii) the perceived total taste intensity of a sucrose/NaCl mixtures was approximately equal to the sum of the perceived sweetness intensity of the mixture and the perceived saltiness intensity of the mixture. The results of the present experiment are compared with the results of previous studies.